Portable communication devices are in widespread use, and are available in a variety of configurations. In recent years, design constraints have been pushed by market pressure, resulting in such devices generally decreasing in size as successive products are brought to market. Furthermore, consumers of these devices have favored devices having no significantly noticeable external antenna as well as devices with metallic or metallized housings. These design constraints have presented substantial challenges to designers of these devices with regard to the antenna design. External whip-type antennas typically have better overall performance in terms of gain compared to internal antennas. However, many advances have been made in the design of internal antennas for portable communication devices, which has resulted in an acceptable level of performance, at least in devices using plastic housing materials. The introduction of metal and metallized housing materials has presented an additional challenge in the design of internal antennas for communication devices.
In some cases, this problem has been alleviated by using the metallized housing itself as part of the antenna radiating structure. However, the size and shape of such housing elements do not always fall in line with optimum or even acceptable antenna geometry. Furthermore, the major surfaces of these devices, if used as part of the radiating structure, are often oriented such that during use they are substantially coplanar with the user's body. In some applications, such orientation may be desirable, but in others, such as wireless earpieces which link to a device typically worn at the user's waist, the orientation may reduce the effectiveness of the antenna. Accordingly, there is a need for an antenna structure for portable communication devices which addresses these problems associated with the prior art.